Tackling the Logiker 2022 Vintage Computing Christmas Challenge – part 1

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See also: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6 and part 7.

Here we go again! Over in the Facebook Color Computer group, David M. shared a link to this year’s Vintage Computing Christmas Challenge from Logiker. Although I did not submit an entry, I did play with last year’s challenge on my TRS-80 Color Computer.

Last year, it was this:

This year, the challenge is a bit more challenging. Per the challenge website, here is sample code for Commodore:

 10 print"{clear}"
 20 print""
 30 print""
 40 print""
 50 print"               *       *"
 60 print"               **     **"
 70 print"               ***   ***"
 80 print"               **** ****"
 90 print"           *****************"
100 print"            ***************"
110 print"             *************"
120 print"              ***********"
130 print"               *********"
140 print"              ***********"
150 print"             *************"
160 print"            ***************"
170 print"           *****************"
180 print"               **** ****"
190 print"               ***   ***"
200 print"               **     **"
210 print"               *       *"
220 goto 220

Starting with that un-optimized version, I will change it to work on the CoCo 1/2/3’s 32-column screen by adjusting it to be properly centered on that display.

 10 CLS
 50 PRINT"           *       *"
 60 PRINT"           **     **"
 70 PRINT"           ***   ***"
 80 PRINT"           **** ****"
 90 PRINT"       *****************"
100 PRINT"        ***************"
110 PRINT"         *************"
120 PRINT"          ***********"
130 PRINT"           *********"
140 PRINT"          ***********"
150 PRINT"         *************"
160 PRINT"        ***************"
170 PRINT"       *****************"
180 PRINT"           **** ****"
190 PRINT"           ***   ***"
200 PRINT"           **     **"
210 PRINT"           *       *"
220 GOTO 220

Unfortunately, this design is 17 rows tall, and the CoCo’s standard display is only 16. It won’t fit:

We should still be able to enter the challenge by having the program print this pattern, even if it scrolls off the screen a bit. To get one extra line there, we can get rid of the line feed at the end of the final PRINT statement in line 210 by adding a semi-colon to the end:

210 PRINT"           *       *";

And so it begins…

And so it begins

The goal is to make this as small as possible. There were many ways to approach last year’s Christmas tree challenge, and you can read about the results and a follow-up with suggestions folks gave to save a byte or two.

A simple thing is to remove the spaces at the front and replace them with the TAB() command:

 10 CLS
 50 PRINTTAB(7)"    *       *"
 60 PRINTTAB(7)"    **     **"
 70 PRINTTAB(7)"    ***   ***"
 80 PRINTTAB(7)"    **** ****"
 90 PRINTTAB(7)"*****************"
100 PRINTTAB(7)" ***************"
110 PRINTTAB(7)"  *************"
120 PRINTTAB(7)"   ***********"
130 PRINTTAB(7)"    *********"
140 PRINTTAB(7)"   ***********"
150 PRINTTAB(7)"  *************"
160 PRINTTAB(7)" ***************"
170 PRINTTAB(7)"*****************"
180 PRINTTAB(7)"    **** ****"
190 PRINTTAB(7)"    ***   ***"
200 PRINTTAB(7)"    **     **"
210 PRINTTAB(7)"    *       *";
220 GOTO 220

Although this only looks like it saves a character per line (“TAB(8)” versus “seven spaces”), the code itself will be smaller since the TAB command tokenizes down to one (or maybe two?) bytes.

Also, the ending quote is not needed if it’s the last thing on a line, so they could be removed:

 50 PRINTTAB(7)"    *       *
 60 PRINTTAB(7)"    **     **
 70 PRINTTAB(7)"    ***   ***

That would save one byte per line.

But, each line number consumes 5-bytes on it’s own, so a better way to save space would be to pack the lines together. Each line you eliminate saves five bytes. That would become pretty unreadable though, but let’s do it anyway:

10 CLS:PRINTTAB(7)"    *       *":PRINTTAB(7)"    **     **":PRINTTAB(7)"    ***   ***":PRINTTAB(7)"    **** ****":PRINTTAB(7)"*****************":PRINTTAB(7)" ***************":PRINTTAB(7)"  *************":PRINTTAB(7)"   ***********"
130 PRINTTAB(7)"    *********":PRINTTAB(7)"   ***********":PRINTTAB(7)"  *************":PRINTTAB(7)" ***************":PRINTTAB(7)"*****************":PRINTTAB(7)"    **** ****":PRINTTAB(7)"    ***   ***":PRINTTAB(7)"    **     **"
210 PRINTTAB(7)"    *       *";
220 GOTO 220

That’s quite the unreadable mess!

This could still be made better, since the text lines were kept under the input buffer limitation size, but when you enter that line, BASIC compresses it (tokenizes keywords like PRINT, TAB and GOTO) making it take less space. You can then sometimes EDIT the line, Xtend to the end and type a few more characters.

That may or may not be allowed for the Logiker challenge. And since I want to provide code here you could copy and then load in to an emulator, I’ll keep it to the limit of what you could type in.

In the next installment, I’ll see if my brane can figure out a way to generate this code using program logic rather than brute-force PRINT statements.

Until then…

My old Space Invaders game running on an arcade cabinet!

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A few years back, Color Computer community member Rietveld Rietveld took an Arcade1Up Rampage cabinet and converted it so I could run other software — such as emulators. Images have been shown of it running the Color Computer emulator and software.

Now, with the official 1.0 release of the NitrOS9 “Ease of Use”, that has been installed on this arcade machine and, by request, my OS-9 game Invaders09 has been ran on it.

I never imagined that my “arcade” game would eventually be running on a (sorta) arcade machine. Thanks, Rietveld!

Reversing bits in C

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In my day job, we have a device that needs data sent to it with the bits reversed. For example, if we were sending an 8-bit value of 128, that bit pattern is 10000000. The device expects the high bit first so we’d send it 00000001.

In one system, we do an 8-bit bit reversal using a lookup table. I suppose that one needed it to be really fast.

In another (using a faster PIC24 chip with more RAM, flash and CPU speed), we do it with a simple C routine that was easy to understand.

I suppose this breaks down to four main approaches to take:

  • Smallest Code Size – for when ROM/flash is at a premium, even if the code is a confusingf mess.
  • Smallest Memory Usage – for when RAM is at a premium, even if the code is a confusing mess.
  • Fastest – for when speed is the most important thing, even if the code is a confusing mess.
  • Clean Code – easiest to understand and maintain, for when you don’t want code to be a confusing mess.

In our system, which is made up of multiple independent boards with their own CPUs and firmware, we do indeed have some places where code size is most important (because we are out of room), and other places where speed is most important.

When I noticed we did it two different ways, I wondered if there might be even more approaches we could consider.

I did a quick search on “fastest way to reverse bits in C” and found a variety of resources, and wanted to point out this fun one:

https://graphics.stanford.edu/~seander/bithacks.html#BitReverseObvious

At that section of this lengthy article are a number of methods to reverse bits. Two of them make use of systems that support 64-bit math and do it with just one line of C code (though I honestly have no understanding of how they work).

Just in case you ever need to do this, I hope this pointer is useful to you.

Happy reading!

ChatGPT AI can analyze 6809 assembly language!

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I gave it this:

clear
    lda #96
clearA
    ldx #1024
loop
    sta ,x+
    cmpx #1536
    bne loop
    rts

…and ChatGPT gave me this:

The clear subroutine in this code is used to clear the screen and initialize it with a grid of green squares. The subroutine begins by loading the value 96 into the accumulator register A using the LDA instruction. This value represents the color value for green, which will be used to fill the screen with green squares.

Next, the LDX instruction is used to load the value 1024 into the X register. This value is the memory address of the top left corner of the screen, and it will be used as the starting point for the POKE operations that will be used to fill the screen with green squares.

The loop label marks the start of a loop that will be used to fill the screen with green squares. Inside the loop, the STA ,X+ instruction is used to store the value in the accumulator register A at the memory location pointed to by the X register, and then increment the X register by one. This has the effect of setting the value at the current memory location to the color value for green, and then moving to the next memory location on the screen.

The CMPX instruction is then used to compare the value in the X register to the value 1536. If the X register is less than 1536, it means that there are still memory locations on the screen that need to be filled with the color value for green. In this case, the BNE instruction is used to branch to the loop label, causing the loop to be repeated and the next memory location on the screen to be filled with the color value for green.

If the X register is equal to 1536, it means that all of the memory locations on the screen have been filled with the color value for green, and the loop can be exited. In this case, the BNE instruction will not be executed, and the RTS instruction will be executed, causing the subroutine to return to the main program. This completes the execution of the clear subroutine.

– ChatGPT AI

Now, it may have figured some of this out because I previously fed it a longer (and fully commented) bit of 6809 code that contained that routine as one of its several functions. That’s the only way I can see it knew the screen location and a green block.

https://chat.openai.com/chat, ya’ll.

My 1987 Paper Route program I wrote for Laverne Ricks in Lufkin, Texas

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Recently on LinkedIn, I saw a post by Rogelio Perea about his Tandy Model 102 portable computer. Although I never owned one, I remember this machine well. I always wanted one. Having a “portable” computer really wasn’t a thing back in those days, and this one even had a modem built in!

I recalled how, when I worked for Radio Shack, I wrote a program on our display Model 102 that we used to track our customer repairs. We had to have everything on paper in those days, but would type things in to the computer so we could find them quicker when a customer inquired about their repair status. I wish I had a copy, but I think the only place it ever existed was the memory of that specific computer.

I do, however, have the program it was based on. It started out as a PEN-PAL program for the Radio Shack Color Computer:

This program, in turn, was based on work I had done for my *ALL RAM* cassette-based BBS program.

*ALLRAM* used BASIC arrays to store the userlog and message base in memory, and would load/save them to tape. My Pen-Pal program did the same thing, but was updated to load from either Tape or Disk.

That Pen-Pal program was also the basis for a custom program I wrote for a lady who ran a large newspaper route where I lived at the time. Her name was Laverne Ricks, and I remember this because I put it on the title screen of the program I wrote for her:

According to comments in the source code, I wrote this on 7/8/1987. This was the summer after I graduated high school, and I had just moved to Lufkin, Texas. Since this was before I got a job at Radio Shack, I am not sure how she and I got connected (possibly through the Lufkin Area CoCo Club or someone at Radio Shack).

The initial version of the program has a menu very similar to the Pen-Pal program:

You can see I had made it look a bit nicer by using graphical black block characters instead of rows of equal signs ;-)

I also found a second version, where I added built-in help:

THIS must be why I wrote the BASIC windowing routine I have written about before. It offered several screens of help:

Neat!

The program has ways to Add a new record:

Ah, the days before spell checkers. You should see the misspellings in my furniture store inventory program I did a year or so later… But I digress.

And you could use arrow keys to flip through them:

Y

You could Delete entries, Edit them, and Insert new ones (at the location you were currently viewing, which was important since a Paper Route was organized by delivery location rather than alphabetical or whatever). There was a way to Jump to a specific entry as well.

And, of course, you could Search by field:

Looking at it 35 years later, I’m pretty impressed with the features it offered. I have no idea what I based all of this on since I’d only owned a VIC-20 and a CoCo at that point and certainly had never worked with any kind of database software that I can recall.

Side note: A short while later, I would do something like this again for someone who ran a garbage collection route, though I think it was for a Tandy 1000 and was using a Deskmate Database.

This is what let me to search out Laverne Ricks and see where she was these days. Sadly, she passed away in 2011.

https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/lufkindailynews/obituary.aspx?n=juanita-laverne-ricks&pid=149650362&fhid=11038

Rest in peace, Laverne Ricks. A tiny bit of your legacy will be remembered here, always.

Until next time…

Insat360 X3 now allows changing WiFi password

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The Insta360 app has an option to change the password on the X3 camera. This may also work on other cameras, but I have not tested it. I have done a password change, but have not verified this actually did anything.

This option will cause the camera to display an authorization prompt, and once confirmed, you can type in a new WiFi password which the device will use.

I encourage ALL Insta360 camera owners to do this, as the default password is well documented and it allows anyone within WiFi range to access and download any photos/videos on the camera.

Arduino, ZigBee and motion sensor help needed.

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For a future project, I need to make use of remote triggers. These could be motion sensors, beam sensors, pressure mats, etc.

The ZigBee standard seems to be the way to go since I can find cheap consumer motion sensors that run on batteries. There also seems to be ZigBee repeaters, which allow giving the distance I need simply by plugging them in from place to place to create a mesh network.

XBee might be another option, if cheap motion sensors and repeaters are also available.

The goal is to have a central location be able to read the motion sensor status for many sensors, that could be spread out beyond walls hundreds of feet away.

Any pointers to where I might get started would be appreciated. Ideally I’d drive this all by a low-cost Arduino since the device will be used in an area where power might not be stable (and I wouldn’t want to corrupt the Linux file system on a Raspberry Pi).

Thanks…

Carl England must be stopped.

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Earlier this month, I received a message on my Sub-Etha Software Facebook page from author (and former/current CoCo programmer) Carl England:

I knew CHR$(13) was a carriage return, so this was creating a file name that contained carraige returns. What would that do?

I typed it in to find out…

How appropriate, because the first thing I said when i saw this code was “weird.”

Of course, now I have a file on my disk that would be hard to delete. Carl said just doing:

KILL A$

…would take care of it. Provided, of course, you did that after running the program, while A$ still existed. Otherwise you’d have to manually type that line again and replace the SAVE with KILL.

Fun.

Character 8 is a backspace, so I could sorta see what this was doing. “TEST” then four backspaces, then a period, then three more backspaces?

Well.

Also weird.

I could have had so much fun with this trick back when I was swapping disks with friends.

Thanks, Carl!

Exploring 1984 OS-9 on a 64K TRS-80 Color Computer – part 3

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See also: part 1, part 2 and part 3.

Welcome back to the days when an IBM Compatible PC required a floppy disk just to start up. You would boot to PC-DOS (on an actual I.B.M. machine) or MS-DOS (for a clone, like the Tandy 1000 that had just come out in 1984 as the first PC compatible for under $1000). And … then what?

Just like there wasn’t much you could do with a PC with only a DOS boot disk, having just OS-9 is rather limited as well. Beyond typing some commands, what could you do?

There was a simple line-based text editor that would let you make text files. You could then “list” the text file and have that redirected to a printer, if you had one.

I guess you could say this was very limited word processing. Just without much word processing (though the EDIT command has search and replace functions).

There was also a 6809 assembler and debugger. You could write programs in 6809 assembly language.

And that was the very first time I ever wrote an OS-9 Level 1 assembly language program, and also the first time I ever used the asm assembler. I was more familiar with the rma assembler that came out for OS-9 Level 2 on the CoCo 3.

What else? Well, just like DOS, if you wanted to do more, you’d need software. Initially, Radio Shack didn’t sell anything for OS-9 other than BASIC09. Investing in that would allow someone who knew normal BASIC to start writing programs for OS-9. (I plan to do a “Converting Color BASIC to BASIC09” series at some point.)

But it was still neat.

Multi-User

Multi-user support is great, but if you only have one keyboard it won’t get you very far. But, OS-9 came with drivers for the CoCo’s banger RS-232 port, and also a “time sharing monitor” program that could monitor such serial port and then launch the “login” program if a terminal was hooked up to such serial port.

You could plug up an RS232 terminal to the CoCo’s serial port, and then launch “tsmon /t1 &” (the ampersand made the program run in the background so the shell prompt would return immediately). Now both you at the keyboard and another user via the serial port could be using the system at the same time. (Albeit at 300 baud.)

Cool.

If that terminal was another CoCo, then a remote login might look like this:

Above, I added a new entry to the PASSWD file for “ALLEN” with a password, and made new directories /D0/USERS/ALLEN. I set that login entry to point to that directory so when I logged in, I would have been changed in to /d0/USERS/ALLEN ready to make new files there.

It’s a bit more work than this to be useful, but that’s basically the idea. It was really a game changer compared to using BASIC in ROM.

Conclusion

So what could you do with this 1984 OS-9 Level 1? Write programs in assembly, or buy BASIC09 and write programs in that langauge.

However, since text-based OS-9 applications were compatible across hardware, there were actually existing OS-9/6809 programs that could run on the CoCo. Third party software specifically for CoCo OS-9 would soon follow, which was interesting because CoCo OS-9 could do graphics.

But that’s an article for another day.

Until next time…